Warning: Contains spoilers for How I Met Your Father episode 3.

The How I Met Your Mother spinoff, How I Met Your Father, has introduced Ellen, and while she’s a boon to the franchise’s LGBTQ+ representation she could present a problem in 2022. How I Met Your Father arrived on the air almost a decade after the original show ended and it has addressed some of the biggest How I Met Your Mother controversies in its early episodes. However, its solution to one problem from the original series might pave the way for new problems as society has moved on.

In How I Met Your Father episode 1, the pilot introduces the full central cast of characters in a hurried manner. In Ellen’s (Tien Tran) opening conversation with Charlie (Tim Ainsley) and Valentina (Francia Raisa) she establishes that she is new to the city from Iowa, is Jesse’s (Chris Lowell) adopted sister, and that she’s getting divorced from her wife who she recognizes that she married because in the small town in Iowa she was the only other lesbian. The series has continued to explore her introduction to the big city with How I Met Your Father episode 2, “FOMO,” seeing her try to chat up women in a club, and episode 3, “The Fixer,” follows her and Charlie hunting for apartments.

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The issue with Ellen in How I Met Your Father is that she is the only LGBTQ+ person identified within a much larger group of apparently cishet people. When exploring their identity and reaching out in new communities, queer people have a tendency to find each other. While she has moved to New York City to, in part, explore a larger queer scene, her new group of friends definitely does not contain that. Ellen risks being an outsider to the group as she seeks to find more queer spaces. In order for the LGBTQ+ representation on How I Met Your Father to be genuine, the show will need her to start spending time with another group of characters, introduce additional queer mainstay characters, or have other members of the group come out as queer (the last of which is not entirely unusual once one member of a group is more openly questioning their gender or sexuality). If the narrative continues genuinely, then she might be present in less of the main group's antics and actually weaken the show’s attempts to improve their LGBTQ+ representation. The ultimate issue here is that in 2022, a single token lesbian character in a diverse show is simply not enough.

How I Met Your Father Ellen Tien Tran Bar Nightclub

While having Ellen as a central character might be a step in the right direction for How I Met Your Father’s representation, it actually risks repeating an issue from How I Met Your Mother. In the original series, Barney’s brother James (Wayne Brady) is the single recurring queer character and most of his personal story and relationship advancement happened off-screen. This could easily happen to Ellen as well in How I Met Your Father if she is exploring queer spaces where the others might not feel as comfortable or be as welcome; however, it would actually be worse as the show introduced Ellen as a major character and for her to then disappear for large stretches would be a big issue for the show.

On the upside, Ellen’s presence might help to push How I Met Your Father to discuss queer spaces. However, from the nature of the framing and cast, that discussion will inevitably be through a non-queer lens. Social understanding of the LGBTQ+ experience has come a long way in the past few years and visibility is at an all-time high for the community. Ellen alone cannot carry the series’ representation. While the relatively short 10-episode run might make it difficult to fix this problem in season 1, if the show continues they will need to add additional LGBTQ+ characters to the main and recurring cast for How I Met Your Father season 2.

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How I Met Your Father releases new episodes Tuesdays on Hulu.